If you are using HotAdd to backup VMDK disks which are larger then 2TB while running vSphere 5.5 be warned that this will fail silently as described in KB2068424. When using the HotAdd transport mode, you are unable to back up disks that are 2 TB or larger in size. Backing up disks larger than 2TB in HotAdd transport mode fail silently, but report a successful back up on Windows virtual machines. VMware currently has no workaround for this! If…

VMware Labs released a new Fling called Real-Time Audio-Video Test Application. The download is available for Windows. What is it? This application verifies the correct installation and operation of the View Horizon Real-Time Audio-Video functionality. It provides a player that displays the “virtual webcam” feed, and also loops back the audio if required. This allows for testing without a third party app (which often requires user accounts such as Skype, WebEx, etc.). The application can also perform load testing by…

VMware Labs released a new Fling called vCO-CLI. The download is available for Windows and Linux. What is it? vCO-CLI aims to provide exploratory programming to the vCO ecosystem. It connects to a running vCO server and presents a JavaScript REPL (Read-Eval-Print-Loop) to the user. All vCO plug-ins, workflows and the entire scripting API can be accessed, invoked and experimented with from the shell. This turns vCO-CLI into a powerful educational and experimentation tool. Access to the plug-in’s inventory is…

VMware Labs released a new Fling called VMware Tools for Nested ESXi. The download is available as vib and is about 1.8MB. This VIB package provides a VMware Tools service (vmtoolsd) for running inside a nested ESXi virtual machine. The following capabilities are exposed through VMware Tools: Provides guest OS information of the nested ESXi Hypervisor (eg. IP address, configured hostname, etc.). Allows the nested ESXi VM to be cleanly shut down or restarted when performing power operations with the…